Princess NPC who, if she dies, will begin the apocalypse:

In a world with probably over 8 billion humans, people are so desperately lonely, they view a machine built to trick them into thinking it’s sentient as the best option for conversation.

For a certain definition of PR, this is true. Most of the cultural associations of the seasons come from ‘classic’ literature, most of which, in the English-speaking world, came from England and New England. How many places in the Southern US actually get a leaf colour change in fall? The cultural touchstones defining the associations of seasons were written in places where the winters are dreary and cold and summers are a bit hot sometimes but not usually too horrible, and certainly not likely to kill you. Try telling someone living in the South of the US that summer is the best season, see how many warning shots they fire past your nose.

Derek doesn’t look like that at night. You’re seeing him because he’s out during the day after a full work shift. How good are you going to look if you have to stay up until 03:00 for an appointment?

Death is like chicken pox, right? Deal with it once and you never have to worry about it again?

Gazelle 3: I’m sick of this. We should empower somebody to act, who’s allowed to do that kind of stuff, but only to the bad animals, who aren’t allowed to do the bad stuff.

Gazelle 4: Who wants to volunteer?

the herd: …

Hyena: I’ll do it! I love fucking shit up! I should be allowed to do it, for the sake of the herd!

Hyenas: Fuck yeah! Let’s go!

Gazelle 3: Does anyone else want to volunteer?

Herd: …

Gazelle 5: I guess I could do it.

Hyenas: Fuck yeah! Welcome to the pack! Just so you know though, if you try to stop or question our ways, you’ll be gutted as a traitor.

Gazelle 5: Um… Maybe I don’t want to join, actually.

Hyenas in uniforms: Give us your fucking shell, tortoise! Civil forfeiture! Fuck yeah! Or we’ll kill you!

Gazelle 6: Hey! You’re not allowed to do that!

Gazelle 7: We should set up a group that’s allowed to do things like that, but only to stop those who do things like that.

Gazelle 6: Any volunteers?

Did the math on this when it was posted previously. No one is anywhere near 10000 hours.

You want to see my Fallout 4 impression?

Nyuh, nyuh, nyuh. I’m Fallout 4. Nyuh, nyuh, nyuh.

But seriously, I was quite disappointed by it too. I really enjoyed 3. NV was kind of fun too. 4 just felt like it was trying too hard in the wrong places. They put a lot of the effort that should have gone into storyline development and put it into the town building minigame. They tried to catch the wave of Ark and all those other base builders and lost the story in the sandbox. Two half games don’t make a whole game.

That sounds more like social anxiety.

Thought it was the other way around. I’ve heard many people blame low reading comprehension within a certain age band on the replacement of phonics with whole word recognition.

‘Are you sure your character would do that? They know it’s basically suicide.’

Kind of surprised that headline doesn’t read ‘Nazi found stomped to death in middle of concert with 50+ unique boot prints, police struggle to find single witness’

Warlock: I promised my soul in exchange for great power.

Rogue: To which great power?

Warlock: All of them. Let them fight over it when I am dead.

Poor snake. He walked into its home and woke it up only to slaughter it.

Seeing as the US mint is planning to discontinue pennies and the general outlook on the future of the world, that could be not that far off.

The truth has value in decision making, while comforting lies have value in stress reduction. Choosing ‘truth’ over ‘comfort’ is a long-termist strategy. Being satisfied by a simple answer will make you feel better now, increasing survivability in the short term, but finding a better model of the world to operate by, a.k.a. learning, lets you make better decisions for the rest of your life.

In a computer, checking a memory address would be closer to what we would call ‘conscious’ actions in a person. It is performed actively by software. In a brain, we still don’t really have a full understanding of how memory is stored, but we at least know it isn’t part of our experience that we have explicitly defined storage locations that we address. If it were, we’d have a name for it. Computers and brains are metaphorically similar but structurally and functionally quite different.

Free will is based on the concept of the individual, a concept bounded by a separation already as arbitrary and illusory as a nation’s border. It’s pragmatic to pretend these things exist in your day to day life, but they don’t mean anything to the universe.

Ultimately, asking for a simple guide to privacy is like asking for a simple guide to safety. It’s a broad category, and different people have different needs. Certain parts are simple (privacy: avoid interaction with big tech, safety: don’t leave a fire unattended) but many elements are either unnecessary (windows privacy-supporting software for someone who only uses an iphone, flotation devices in the Sahara) or necessarily complex. (data hygiene procedures, having the correct type of fire extinguisher) There is no prebuilt ‘Privacy Guide for Darkguyman’s situation.’

Oh man, that first sentence, already…

This summer, Elon Musk spoke to the National Governors Association and told them that “AI is a fundamental risk to the existence of human civilization.”